


that which is beneath, that which we share

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Worship, M/M, Protectiveness, Sparring, protective Charles, top!Charles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 02:37:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone brings a knife to a gunfight, and Charles does everything he can to make sure everyone is okay, and he doesn't know why Erik is surprised by that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that which is beneath, that which we share

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Porn Battle XIV](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/57050.html). Prompt used: protect.

The walls and rooms of the mansion are still home to a hundred strange dreams, a hundred nightmares, and now there are people here who are running from the demons of their pasts, and on some nights it is all Charles can do to shield against them. He’s just glad that he doesn’t need much sleep; as it is, he spends a lot of the late hours trying to tune out someone else’s fears.

Sometimes it feels like he has to tune out everyone else’s fears, in addition to his own.

Tonight, however, he’s not alone in his waking vigil: there’s someone else who’s doing their damnedest best to _forget_ , to _be_ and not think at all - and when he realizes that there could only be one person who might not be sleeping yet, it’s no debate at all to exchange his worn pajamas for a button-down shirt and his khakis.

He does stop off in the kitchen for a pitcher of water and two glasses; after a moment’s thought, he takes the small blue box from Raven’s shelf in the refrigerator, and makes himself a promise to put two packages of bonbons on the next grocery list.

The wakeful thoughts lead him all the way around the house, to the room that the children have converted into a gym.

Charles stops when he’s just inside the door, and he has just enough presence of mind to put his things on the table on his right, before he’s completely mesmerized.

The lights in the room shine harshly down on the sweat dripping off Erik’s hands; his hair is dark with it, dark and dripping and falling in rough, short lengths around his face.

As Charles watches, Erik dances on the mats, running through a series of combat stances: he kicks and punches and weaves into and out of his invisible opponent’s guard. It’s nothing at all like the things he’s been teaching Hank or Darwin - he’s in a hurry for this one, fists and feet blurring as he attacks.

 _Have to protect,_ is the thought that Erik is practically shouting. Charles can feel the mental echoes of it like they’re a physical presence, pressing into his skin. 

_Who protects you,_ Charles thinks in a split-second of lucidity.

“Apparently that’s your job,” Erik says, suddenly. Wry as his tone might be, and deeper because of his exertions, there’s nothing combative in it, nothing that might make Charles think that he could be Erik’s next target, for sparring or anything else but a conversation. “Who taught you how to fight with a knife?”

Charles blinks, caught completely off his guard. “Is _that_ what this is all about?”

Erik stops moving, at last, and stands stock still in the center of the mats. Harsh breathing. The harsh overhead light throws his wiry limbs into startling sharp relief. Pale scars, many of them old, and a handful of them new.

He jerks his head impatiently at Charles. “See for yourself,” he says, and he gestures at his forehead.

Charles already knows what he’s going to see: battle all around them, smoke and fire and bullets, Erik holding all the metal at bay.

Erik who had been completely ignorant of the plastic blade heading for his heart.

As Charles watches, Erik’s image of him darts into view; he can hear his own wordless roar ringing in his ears, can feel his bones shuddering as he slams into Erik’s would-be attacker. Two pinpoint strikes to wrist and throat, and the man with the knife is disarmed and out of the fight.

“I teach the children to protect themselves, but it seems that you might want to take over some of the classes,” Erik says as he pours a glass of water and drains it dry.

“So the man brought a knife to a gunfight - and?” Charles lifts an eyebrow. “How was anyone supposed to know that he was carrying plastic?”

“It’s my task to protect all of you.”

“And you do quite a good job of it. We each owe you our lives, several times over.”

Erik blinks, and then suddenly looks - he’s not sad, precisely. Perhaps he just seems to have sobered down after the adrenaline rush of his forms. “And that is not even the first time I’ve owed you mine.”

He thinks about Miami, he thinks about Cuba, and Charles fights down the urge to roll his eyes. “We’re not keeping score, Erik - not you and me.”

“You saved my life, Charles. You saved it _again_.”

Charles sighs. “And you will save mine again, and I will save yours again, whether by accident or design or being in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills. We’ve been over this, Erik. We’re not talking about owing each other anything. We are just working together.”

“And when we work together, and do things for each other, then - ”

Charles blinks. “Then? Then we’re at each other’s sides, helping each other, acknowledging each other, appreciating what we do - ? Is this not a good thing? You’ve lost me, Erik.”

He pads back to the table and opens the box of chocolates. Three pieces left, each wrapped in gaudy plastic and paper. Charles takes one and offers Erik the rest.

“No, thank you.”

“Your loss,” Charles says, and he unwraps the candy and sticks it in his mouth. Rum and cream and a hint of walnut underneath the rich chocolate.

He can feel Erik’s regard like it’s an actual physical sensation, and this time there’s something in it that makes Charles turn partway back in Erik’s direction. “What? Is there something on my face?”

When Erik moves, Charles has a split second to think of him moving in slow motion: Erik wipes his hand off on his sweat pants. Warm fingers against his cheek. The touch is not perfunctory at all: it lingers, and Charles instinctively turns into it. 

His telepathy reacts to physical touch and it quests out between them, enfolds the two of them, and he permits himself just a moment to luxuriate in the sense of Erik’s thoughts all around them, burning protectively, before he tries to pull away, as gently as he can. “I don’t want to intrude,” he makes himself whisper. It would have been easier to think it, but he’s not interested in courting trouble. Sometimes Erik welcomes him and sometimes Erik is pricklier than a wall of climbing brambles.

A beautiful mind, for all that it’s more complicated than any puzzle.

So Charles is surprised when Erik’s response is _I want you to intrude._

“Erik - ?”

Charles mourns the loss of contact when Erik’s hand moves away - but it’s back, and stronger than ever, because now those fingertips are at his temple. Erik’s just touching him there, lightly, and the contact feels like a caress, a sweet brush against his mind. It makes Charles sigh.

 _I know I make things difficult for you, Charles,_ Erik thinks. His thoughts are full of sharp edges, rough and strange at the best of times, completely irresistible. _I’m set in my ways - and to me you are nothing if you are not change, and I must react to you._

 _I can stop -_ Charles begins.

 _No. Let me finish._ The harsh light in Erik’s eyes is gone with the next blink. “I mean it, you know. I want you here,” and Erik’s free hand touches his own forehead. _Tonight. Because I want to show you my appreciation. Because I want to show you that I am learning from you._

“Learn what? I did not know that I had anything to teach you, Erik - ”

“I am learning that it is a good thing to be protected by _you_.”

There are so many possible responses to that. Charles goes with the simplest, the one with the most truth: _I will do everything I can._

 _Yes,_ Erik thinks, and then he’s coming closer, closer, his image blurring out to Charles’s eyes. Charles squints at him, just in time for Erik to make contact.

Erik’s mouth is warm and sweet and firm.

Charles closes his eyes and kisses him back.

There is a moment when the contact shivers, caught between _chaste_ and _needy_ , and Charles groans and reaches for Erik. The only way he can get a good grip on him is by his sweat-soaked shirt, and Charles bunches the material tightly in his fists.

Erik comes willingly. _I want you, Charles._

_Here?_

_Wherever you want. However you want._

Charles pries himself from the kiss long enough to smile, and murmur, “You really ought to be careful of the things you think at me.”

“Not if they can get me what I want,” Erik teases back.

A sharp glance at a sharp smile.

“Come,” Charles says, eventually, and he leads the way back to his own quarters, only stopping when he is standing next to his bed, near the pillows. He looks carefully at Erik, who is standing near the foot of the bed. There is an expanse of crumpled sheets between them. “Are you sure that this is what you want, Erik?”

“I’m sure, Charles,” is the reply. “I want you in my head. I want you with me.” Erik looks down at himself. “Though perhaps you might appreciate it if I went to wash first - ”

 _No,_ Charles thinks, and he surprises himself with the insistence in the thought. _Just as you are now is fine._

He watches Erik smile, and bow his head a little. 

It’s either do something or spend the entire night just staring at Erik, come to offer so much to him, and in the end Charles looks away with an effort, and focuses instead on getting out of his clothes.

Only for Erik to once again step into his space. His hands around Charles’s wrists, incongruously gentle. “Let me.”

Charles’s own scars are revealed, eventually: a welter of them on his forearms. 

“You have been protecting yourself all your life,” Erik murmurs as he traces the lines on Charles’s skin. Some of the scars are pale, and some of them are dark.

“Not just myself. Raven too,” Charles says, equally hushed.

“And now, the rest of us.”

“With everything I have.” And Charles blinks when Erik looks at him and smiles. “What?”

“Even me,” Erik says.

“ _Especially_ you.”

“Thank you.” And then, again, a kiss: but for this one Erik seems to be intent on taking Charles apart. Intensity, strength, the unmistakable power in him. The sensations wash over Charles, threaten to bear him down.

Charles fights the current, shoves Erik back, takes control of the kiss. He pours his own considerable need into it, the intricate tangle of emotions that Erik inspires in him, and Erik gasps into the kiss, takes it all in and demands more.

_Please, Charles._

_Yes, Erik,_ he thinks back, because there’s no other possible response.

As he bears Erik gracelessly into the pillows Charles falls headlong into Erik’s mind, and from there he gathers what Erik wants: he wants this desperately, wants the rush, wants _Charles_. 

_Here, now,_ Erik is all but shouting with every thought he has. 

So Charles leans in and kisses Erik hard, teeth and tongue and overpowering desire, until he wrenches a soft and helpless groan from him.

He digs his fingers into stressed muscle, leaving temporary dents in Erik’s arms.

Down, slowly, inexorably, stripping Erik naked along the way. Charles scrapes his teeth over Erik’s collarbones, down his pectorals. He tastes the hammering pulse at Erik’s wrist and the sweat still pooling in his navel. He kisses the hard spur of Erik’s hipbone, the scars up and down his thighs.

 _Charles,_ Erik thinks again. One single syllable, drowning in need.

 _You’ll really let me do whatever I want to you,_ Charles thinks, wonder tangled in lust.

_Please?_

“Yes,” Charles all but growls. Where he then gets the strength to flip Erik over onto his stomach, he doesn’t know. The sight of Erik’s broad back, the way it tapers down to his impossibly narrow waist, all but takes Charles’s breath away.

He learns that stretch of skin with care: he doesn’t linger over the scars, not tonight, but he does make a point of kissing every inch he can reach. He murmurs nonsense words that he intends for compliments into sweat-slicked muscle. He bites Erik gently in the small of his back, and smiles when Erik groans and bucks up into the contact, temporarily forgetting Charles’s name and his own.

When Charles presses his thumbs into the dimpled skin just above Erik’s ass he gets a quiet whimper, and a stray thought flickers across the connection between the two of them. 

_Erik?_

There’s a long moment of silence, and then Erik replies, a breathless rush of a thought, _Can you do that?_

Charles smiles. _Of course. Anything for you._ He’s not surprised to find out that he means it.

That makes Charles think of - needful things, preparations. He doesn’t want to leave Erik, however, and in the end he goes for the jar of hand cream in one of his dresser drawers. He drops the jar on the pillow that Erik isn’t occupying, and goes back to his self-appointed task.

There is a quick hitch in Erik’s breathing when Charles exposes him, just enough to plant a sloppy kiss right above his hole; another when Charles dips into the cream and strokes a wet, slippery circle around that tight pucker. _Easy, Erik. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to make this good for you._

_It is, it already is -_

_More?_ Charles asks.

_Please!_

That urgency wrenches at Charles, but he wrestles down his excitement and the awareness of his arousal, and carefully opens Erik up with his fingers and, eventually, his tongue. 

Erik is eager, and willing, and getting him ready takes next to no time at all. 

Still, Charles lingers for the pleasure of it, for the way that Erik gasps at every lick, every thrust of Charles’s fingers. 

_Close,_ Erik warns at last. _Too good, too close -_

_I thought you’d never ask,_ Charles thinks as he pulls out and pulls away. 

The hand cream is cool on his cock, but it does nothing at all to quell the fiery need in him. 

Erik rises to his hands and knees. 

Charles shakes his head, short sharp movement. _No. On your back. I want to see you._

_Charles,_ Erik thinks, and there is wonder in his eyes even as he scrambles to obey, sweat of a different kind beading up along his hairline. 

He means to sink slowly into Erik, but the man has other ideas: as soon as Charles is lined up, as soon as Charles breaches him, he snaps his hips upward, and Charles cries out with the suddenness of it, his cock in the tight eager grip of Erik’s body. 

He gets his own back by pulling back, until only the tip of his cock is still in Erik - and then he thrusts back in, all the way home in a single stroke, and Erik’s hoarse cry is enough incentive for him to do it again, and again, and again. 

It gives him time to dive into Erik’s mind again - and this time he seeks out the pleasure centers, locks them down, and it’s better than screaming, it’s almost as good as the amazing inexorable rhythm of the sex itself, to hear Erik pleading for release. 

Charles bears down into Erik with each thrust, and he relishes every broken half-phrase that falls from that mouth: praise or swearing or _please_ or _harder_ or Charles’s name. 

He dangles them both over the edge for a long, long moment - and when the fall comes, it is brilliant and blinding and profound, and he catches Erik and holds him close, protective and possessive all at once. 

It’s a very long time before either of them can be anything approaching coherent again. 

“When can we do that again?” Erik asks, at last, and Charles’s first response is a laugh, delighted and pleased, and it’s even better when Erik hangs on, and joins in. 


End file.
